Russians Offer To Help U.s. Curbn. Korea Missiles

April 29, 2000|By WALTER PINCUS The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Russia has offered to work together with the United States to restrain North Korea's missile program if the Clinton administration abandons its proposal to amend the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to permit construction of a limited national missile defense system, a senior U.S. official said Friday.

"They are saying, let's deal diplomatically or cooperate on a theater missile defense and shoot down [North Korean] missiles that way," the official said, describing the offer that Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov presented to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright during three days of talks here.

While agreeing to review Ivanov's suggestion, the official said, the Clinton administration still intends to seek alterations to the 1972 ABM Treaty at a June 4-5 summit meeting in Moscow. The Russian counterproposal is geared toward eliminating the threat posed by medium-range North Korean missiles to the Asian region and fails to deal with the potential threat to the United States posed by North Korea's efforts to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile, the official said.

Russia has steadfastly objected to amending the ABM Treaty, which it views as a cornerstone of nuclear arms control. The treaty prohibits national missile defenses, ensuring that each side could destroy the other and, in theory, deterring either side from launching a first strike.

Ivanov said Thursday that his proposal was "an alternative program ... to adequately respond to new threats" from countries such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq, which are believed to be developing long-range missiles. Although Ivanov did not publicly disclose details of the proposal, U.S. officials said the Russians talked about providing various types of aid-including technical assistance for the North Korean civilian satellite -- launching program -- as a way to entice the North Koreans to stop developing military booster rockets.

The discussions over the past three days were intended to begin laying the groundwork for President Clinton's summit meeting with newly elected Russian President Vladimir Putin. The summit is expected to focus on U.S. proposals to preserve the ABM Treaty while altering it to allow construction of a "limited" national missile defense -- one able to knock down a few missiles fired by a so-called rogue state, but not large enough to stop a barrage of hundreds of Russian warheads.

As described in a draft U.S. protocol presented to the Russians in January, the first phase of the U.S. missile defense program would involve construction of 100 launchers and interceptor missiles with an upgraded radar in Alaska to meet a possible attack from North Korea. That could be supplemented sometime later with an additional 100 launchers at a second site -- possibly North Dakota -- to meet missile threats from countries in the Persian Gulf.

From Moscow's point of view, however, the U.S. plan to negotiate amendments to the ABM Treaty in phases would be "worse than abrogation" of the 1972 agreement, a Russian official said Friday in Washington.

The official, briefing Russian reporters, added that the three days of talks had made "no progress" but had "a good tone."

Clinton faces a self-imposed deadline of this fall to decide whether to deploy a missile defense. The Pentagon has scheduled a crucial flight test of the interceptor missile for June, the last trial before the president's decision. In a previous test in January, the U.S. "kill vehicle" narrowly missed a dummy target over the Pacific.

Moscow is concerned that the proposed U.S. missile defense system, although limited at first, could be enlarged to the point that Russia's declining nuclear forces would no longer provide a reliable deterrent. Those concerns have been heightened by public statements of leading Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, that the United States should be looking to build a more robust missile defense system than the Clinton administration is considering.

"It seems to me to be in Russia's interest ... to do it [renegotiate the ABM Treaty] now, in the context of an administration that wants to preserve the ABM, versus later, with an administration that might take a more robust position and do away with the ABM," Samuel "Sandy" Berger, the president's national security adviser, said Friday.

Berger indicated that in the context of the ABM talks, the United States might be willing to consider Russia's desire to reduce the number of nuclear warheads on both sides in a so-called START III accord.

"Russia's numbers [of warheads] are being driven down by Russian economics. The problem is that the Russians would like our numbers to come down to a level proximate to what theirs will be at, by virtue of the hard reality of money," he said.

To make a limited U.S. missile defense more acceptable to Russia, the Clinton administration also is proposing wide-ranging verification procedures, including short-notice inspections at the interceptor site in Alaska, according to the draft presented to the Russians.